Egypt’s Sinai challenge

Egypt will apparently continue to grapple with terrorism for years to come.

The Egyptian government launched a campaign over the last few months to put a cap on the emerging insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula. In its bid to choke off the emerging terror and to make Sinai safer, the government demolished houses, arrested suspects and imposed curfews.

And yet, putting an end to terrorism in this particular area will take a long time.

Thursday night, a series of simultaneous, coordinated, attacks on military facilities in the Sinai killed dozens of Egyptian soldiers.

These attacks were the first since the militant group operating in the Sinai announced its affiliation with the terrorist group that calls itself Islamic State.

The scale of the assaults shows that the militants still enjoy sufficient ability to target the army and the police despite the crackdown.

This begs the following question: Why has the Egyptian army — one of the strongest in the region — been ineffective in combating guerrillas?

President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi comes from the ranks of the army. Those who voted for him had faith that only an army general could effectively deal with the challenge posed by the terrorists.

And yet, it seems that the army is not yet ready to fight these guerrillas in the Sinai.

The army is trained, by and large, in traditional warfare rather than to deal with terrorists.

The situation is the Sinai is a bit complicated. Bedouins who live in the Sinai harbour some resentment against the central government in Cairo. They feel that they have been ignored by the government for far too long.

Therefore, they show no willingness to cooperate with either army or government.

In other words, decades of wrong policies turned the Sinai into a fertile ground for militants to join Ansar Bayt El Maqdis. Therefore, the challenge is not related to security alone.

The Egyptian government needs to rethink its approach and implement a multi-pronged approach to effectively deal with the very complicated situation in Sinai.

Although Sisi inherited this difficult situation from his predecessor, the recurrent terrorist attacks in this particular region, at this scale, can hurt the image of both government and presidency.

While talking to some sophisticated Egyptian intellectuals in regard to Sisi, the running theme was that he was well positioned and well equipped to restore security.

They made the case that security comes first. Short of achieving it, Egypt will not be able to realise economic recovery, they argued.

Indeed, expectations were high.

Not it is clear that Egypt badly needs a comprehensive review of its military, security and political approaches.

Acknowledging that the Sinai has become a huge challenge, Sisi pledged to fight terrorists until the end.

Sinai has become a haven for militants who mount attacks on Egyptian targets. 

But the security approach alone is not expected to pay off.

The Egyptian government needs to take into account the long-standing grievances of the bedouins who often protested what they deem as economic deprivation and political alienation.

The bedouins’ tendency to cooperate with the militants has little to do with their ideology and more with their perception of their belittled position in Egypt.

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